Page 26 of On His Team

“No. The point is you had forty-two kids, eight players, a rink, and an entire athletic department available to you, and you did the easiest version.”

Rowan looks at me for a second.

“You’re going to make this class harder than it needs to be.”

“I’m going to make it good.”

His mouth shifts at one corner. “Yeah. I can tell.”

I don’t know if he’s making fun of me or if that’s an actual compliment, and his face isn’t helping.

Then he nods toward the event notes I’ve abandoned on the bench. “Your intermission thing has a problem, though.”

I straighten. “What problem?”

“Intermission’s eighteen minutes. You’d get maybe nine once they resurface. Forty-two kids on and off the ice in nine minutes is a lot of kids.”

“So do half of them.”

“Then you’ve got twenty-one families mad at you.”

I narrow my eyes because he’s right, which is irritating. “So do it over two games.”

He goes quiet for a second, actually thinking about it. His eyes shift somewhere over my shoulder before coming back to me.

“That’d work.”

I grin again. “See?”

“I didn’t say it wouldn’t.”

I lift a brow. “You were thinking it.”

He shakes his head. “I wasn’t.”

“You have a very judgmental face,” I say.

He laughs. “I’ve barely moved my face.”

“Exactly.”

Cole comes back around the shelving with Rowan’s skate. “Try that.”

Rowan takes it, holds it up, gets his finger against the inside of the boot, and pushes on the patch.

“Yeah. That’s good.”

“Don’t lace it dry. And if it goes again, that boot’s done, and you’re going to have three weeks of breaking in a new one in February, so.”

“Yeah.” Rowan tucks the skate under his arm and pushes off the counter. “Thanks.”

He looks at me on the way past. “See you.”

“Yeah.”

He goes out the door toward the locker room, and it swings shut behind him, and I pick up the next blade guard.

It’s about four minutes before Cole says anything.